Reviews and essays

  • 1996: Pierre Bayle-prize for theater critique: shared prize for 10 years jury reports of the Theater Festival.
  • 1992-1994: Editor in Chief of theater magazine Toneel Theatraal Chairman of the Jury of the Theater Festival
    Jury reports published in weekly Vrij Nederland, as a special and program paper to the festival (1992-1994)
  • 1968: reviews and essays in:
    • weeklies Accent and De Nieuwe Linie, weekly reviews (1968-1976)
    • theatre magazine Toneel Theatraal longer essays a.o on Antonin Artaud (1968), and on John Arden (1969)
    • quarterly De Gids, a.o. Ruimte voor Verbeelding/Space for Imagination, on the theater space, 1992

About own directorial work:

  • The Measures Taken, Te Elfder Ure, Nijmegen, 1975
  • also published in R. Steinweg, Brechts Modell der Lehrstücke, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1967.
  • Aus Anlass der Massnahme on Brecht’s didactic plays in Massnehmen, Theater der Zeit, Berlin, 1999

Latest news and upcoming events

New Books!

  • Het Leugenlabyrint (Eng. Labyrinth of Lies), a novel, Prometheus, Amsterdam, 2021.

A MOVING AND UNUSUAL WAR NOVEL ABOUT ORDINARY JEWISH PEOPLE AND THEIR IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES.

‘The Hague, May 9th 1940. Bert Meijer van Leer becomes the proud owner of a German motorbike. Little does he know that the motorbike, a Zündapp, will save his life and cause his downfall. On May 10th the German army invades Holland. On that day Emmeke, Bert’s sister, celebrates her birthday. Emmeke and Bert are Jewish, but not practicing. Bert has been baptized and marries Lien who is Protestant. Emmeke is married to Joost, who isn’t Jewish either and anti-religious out of principle. Ingredients for a fatal chain of events.

Their ‘mixed marriages’ can’t protect them against the measures the Germans take against the Jews: excluding them from the society they live in through registration and public humiliation by forcing them to wear the Star of David; and, if they don’t comply, arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to a concentration camp.

In Labyrinth of Lies author Paul Binnerts witnesses how the Germans slowly tighten the screws. His characters are facing decisions, of which only afterwards can be said they were the wrong decisions. The only thing he can do is keeping them company.’

www.uitgeverijprometheus.nl
www.bol.com

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